The Importance of Temperature
Ensuring the proper temperature of beverages and across your entire beverage system makes a difference in taste, experience, and profit. Staff may know the ideal temperature for storing wine, keeping kombucha fresh, and serving the perfect beer, but seemingly tiny habits can drastically affect temperature and therefore, your product. Storage temperature can affect beverage foam, carbonation, and flavor, impacting the customer experience and your revenue. As simple as it is for temperature to negatively impact your venue, it’s just as simple to implement processes that can prevent unwanted temperature changes. Read on to learn more about the effects of temperature on beverages and how Sestra’s TapWise technology takes the guesswork out of managing your product temperatures.
Foam
Beer foam is a result of a phenomenon known as nucleation. Proteins with a high rate of hydrophobicity form bubbles with the help of CO2 produced in the fermentation process. Thick, compact, and long lasting foam aerates beer’s aroma and affects taste sensations.
Increased temperatures can create too much foam, causing your lines to fill. Foam is 25% beer so when you have to clear your lines, that foam becomes wasted beer, causing your venue to pour revenue down the drain. When you consider the effort involved in ordering, stocking, moving, and connecting each keg, it is important to ensure that every ounce turns into revenue for your venue.
These graphs illustrate a venue’s storage temperatures and resulting top offs due to foam. As you can see, at the same time temperature spiked, the venue was topping off 1 in 3 beers, as a result of increased foam.
Carbonation
As temperatures increase, carbon dioxide separates from your beverage, causing carbonated beverages like prosecco and kombucha to lose their characteristic “fizz”. This also often results in lost revenue due to the need to replace a drink. “Flat” is a common beverage complaint that can often be avoided by optimizing temperature.
When beer begins to go over 38 degrees, even by as little as half a degree, the CO2 begins to come out of solution and creates major foaming issues.
Flavor
To put it simply, cold beverages stay fresher longer and taste better. While higher temperatures don’t result in a specific taste, they speed up the oxidation process, causing beverages to stale prematurely or enter a second stage of fermentation. Beer, for example, can develop a cardboard-like flavor, lose its hoppiness, and have a degraded aroma.
Most cold brew coffee becomes bitter and metallic if not kept properly chilled.
The above issues all impact…
The Customer Experience
What happens when a venue serves beverages that haven’t been stored at the proper temperature? Customers won’t stay customers for long and both your bottom line and your reputation are affected. Prioritizing beverage temperature in storage, in the line, and through dispensing, contributes to the ideal beverage and a positive customer experience.
5 Ways Your Venue Can Prevent Unwanted Temperature Changes:
1. Train staff to rotate kegs quickly, minimizing the time kegs are between refrigeration
2. Keep walk in doors closed at all times
3. Schedule defrost cycles well outside of service hours
Your refrigerator intentionally turns off to raise the temperature during defrost cycles (pictured above). Scheduling these cycles at least 3 hours before beverage service prevents your inventory from freezing while ensuring beverages are the proper temperature when dispensed.
4. Place light beers furthest from the door as they’re most impacted by high temperature
5. Sign up for Sestra temperature alerts
TapWise temperature alerts occur in real time, warning staff of potential issues and allowing your venue to solve problems before they happen. You can check your temperature trends to isolate behaviors that are increasing temperatures and affecting your product. In addition to the alerts your venue and staff receive, Sestra’s Pour Center Control monitors customer temperatures on an ongoing basis as a part of our Dispensing as a Service (DaaS) solution.
While seemingly tiny habits can sabotage your inventory, simple changes can optimize storage temperature, resulting in just the right amount of foam, carbonation, and flavor. Not only can TapWise send alerts that help you address problems before they can negatively impact your product and the guest experience, Sestra’s Customer Success team can help your venue analyze data, isolate trends, and update practices. Whether you’re ready to implement TapWise beverage dispensing or ensure you’re getting the most out of your current Sestra service, contact us today.
